Kaleidoscopic Curiosities

from my gallery, day 5

My dearest Helga commissioned this Julie Fillo painting for my birthday one year. It's one of my very favorite gifts, ever! (Made all the more precious by the fact that it was lost at my post office for about a month.)

Julie is painting an extensive series of women with birds, and Helga asked her to create one that looks like me, includes my favorite colors and a hint of my personal symbology. It's a big painting, probably 16x20, and it graces my living room.

from my gallery, day 4

I regret that I do not know the name of the artist who created this fabulous print! I bought it at an art and craft show at someone's home in Pasadena two Decembers ago. I kept trying to talk myself out of buying it because I was supposed to be shopping for gifts, and I couldn't understand why I was so intensely enamored by it -- it's not as if I collect singing cowboy memorabilia or have a horse fetish or anything... But after a while it became clear that Roy Rogers and Trigger would be gracing my wall. I have never regretted it. And, on second thought, wouldn't a wall full of artistic interpretations of singing cowboys be a wonderful collection?? I gotta get right on that.

another theme week: my personal art gallery

I'll be out of pocket for the next several days so I'm going to regale you with another theme week, like we did last month with my favorite kitchen things. This month, I'd like to show you some of my favorite artworks I've purchased or acquired. I don't have a whole lot but the pieces I have, I adore.

This is one of Carla Sonheim's "girls" which is already darling enough, but the red bird in the tree happens to be one of my personal symbols for something that is very precious to me, so there was no way I wasn't buying this little painting!

It's painted on a 6x6 wood panel and it perches perfectly atop my desk hutch.

I think I picked it up at ArtFest several years ago.

Carla will be teaching at ArtUnraveled in Phoenix this August (the workshops were just posted!).   

kitchen treasures, day 4

Back to the kitchen, my sweets. Which of these things is not like the others?

If you said R2D2, I'm afraid you are mistaken: R2 is exactly where he ought to be, because he is a pepper mill! Spin his little head-dome around and he'll leave a trail of freshly cracked pepper. How cool is that? (In case you aren't aware, I am a serious Star Wars fan -- original trilogy only, please.) The only way this could be cooler would be if it beepled and boopled while it worked (I am sure some geekboy will figure out a way to enable this, sort of like that kid who hacked into the iPhone to enable the use of phone companies other than the one it was contractually married to). Now I need a C3PO salt shaker but I don't think it exists yet. Waiting patiently for the factory in China to catch up with me. 

kitchen treasures, day 3

My dear mother cross stitched this sampler. I heartily endorse its sentiment. :)

kitchen photolog, day two

 

These are my beloved Dr. Doolittle curtains! I think I may have mentioned them long ago in this space, but they always bring a smile to my face and definitely belong on this list of kitchen favorites. I found these at a flea market and could barely contain my excitement, but anyone who shops at flea markets knows that Rule #1 is "Don't let the vendor know that you'll pay any price to get these," so I calmly inquired about the price and forked over the cash without allowing my face to register the giddiness I was feeling.

Dr. Doolittle was one of my favorite childhood films, along with Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Mary Poppins (I definitely had a thing for Dick Van Dyke). I loved the ship and the weird island and Rex Harrison's dashingly handsome doctor who could talk with the animals. In my kitchen curtains you'll find the snail with the broken tail, the horse who needed glasses, the two headed push-me-pull-you, the talking parrot and the whale who saved the day, not to mention a monkey wearing clothing who is the main reason my eye was drawn to this textile in the first place.

Yah, they're a little nursery-ish but they make me happy (and they go perfectly with the green walls and all my vintage dishes, so they're a keeper).